A startup to aid weavers and artisans
The startup Pickmycloth is designed to assist weavers and artisans to get rid of the middleman and earn according to their hard work.
The idea of startup penetrated in the mind of Dinesh Suram, M Ram Kalyan and PV Abhishek when they saw the procedure of weaving a saree while shopping for a college fest in a nearby village. The low income of these weavers in comparison to the massive amount of work tormented them. This is where the scheme of creating a platform where artisans could directly sell and value their product pitched in.
The idea received its end in 2019 when the trio built an e-commerce platform ‘Pickmycloth’ to directly sell handloom and handicraft products. Working as a middle man, the intermediaries acquire maximum benefit from the process of transferring goods from artisans to the customers. The startup aims at bridging the gap between artisans and customers by eliminating the middleman. This would also enhance accessibility and affordability.
No path is hurdle free. They too faced challenges. The biggest challenge was to convince artisans to use the app. Most artisans were semi-literate and language acted as a barrier as they belonged from different regions of India. They took help from local translators to understand the challenges they were facing.
The artisans upload the photo of their product and customers choose from their option and pay for it. Post lockdown there was a surge in their orders owing to social distancing and the closing down of shops and markets. The demolition of livelihood pushed these artisans to use the app.
According to the founders, their startup stands out of the crowd due to its easy to use the app for artisans that they have designed with thorough research.
Their future plan includes an introduction to AI to generate data insights and analytics for weaver's vernacular language conversion and enhancing user experience using augmented reality.
